Page 24 of Between Us

‘Yes, I’m saying that wildlife frolics.’

She and Meredith collapsed.

‘Fuck you both!’ Gina said, witnessing their honking, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was finally smiling, grudgingly.

Roisin’s chest was heaving as laughter subsided. She felt guilty that Gina’s trauma was her first moment of authentic joy since they arrived.

‘Gina, not only is he not going to have noticed the detail, but I’m absolutely certain you look incredible without your clothes on. You’re leaving out the most important thing here,’ Roisin said, wiping her eyes. ‘What will have registered, if anything, is fitness. Whereas if it had been me, he could’ve sued for mental distress. Also …’ Roisin had to say this without inviting false hope: ‘It shows he cares.’

‘Hi. Can I come in?’ Matt said, interrupting, from the other side of the door.

Gina looked to Roisin and Meredith for an answer or reassurance.

‘Don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to,’ Roisin said.

‘I’d rather face him with you here,’ Gina whispered. She wiped her eyes and rearranged her hair around her shoulders. ‘Come in.’

Matt entered, clad in t-shirt as well as boxers. ‘I wanted to apologise, again. I’ve been a total dick. Shoulder-barging locked doors is completely not OK. I’m mortified. Please promise me that you won’t forever associate me with this moment of idiocy.’

Roisin wasn’t sure if it was emotional intelligence or public school manners that made Matt claim the shame of this encounter; either way, it was astute.

‘It’s alright. You didn’t mean to do it,’ Gina said, in a very polite and somewhat recovered voice. Then, ‘It’s forgotten. I promise.’

‘Thank you,’ Matt said.

‘Night,’ they chorused, as he left.

Roisin turned to Gina. ‘Gina. This is nothing. It’s for Matt to feel awkward, like he said. Be confident in your skin, because if I was in your skin, I certainly would be.’

‘I bet you are a lovely teacher,’ Gina said. ‘You always know what to say.’

Roisin hugged her bare, delicate bones. ‘I know how it feels to be held together by sheer bravado and Charlotte Tilbury.’

‘What’s going on? Where have you been?’ Joe said, unexpectedly propped on an elbow, awake, as Roisin gently closed the bedroom door behind her.

‘Your ghost story scared Gina; she screamed, and Matt broke into her room to rescue her. She was naked and feels very embarrassed.’

‘Really? Like, not a stitch?’

‘Yup.’

‘Lucky bastard, as usual,’ Joe mumbled, as he pushed his face into the pillow.

Roisin sighed as she snapped the light off.

15

The next morning, Dev was ladling out fried eggs and bacon in the kitchen with the sang-froid of a man who’d once carried on making full Englishes inFlatmateswhen the police had turned up after a report of common assault by a drag queen, Margaret Snatcher, on a vegan sex toy manufacturer.

The offensive weapon was a bullet vibrator in the shape of a chilli pepper, and the footage of officers inspecting and bagging it saw some of the show’s highest ratings.

Everyone was extremely perky at the sight of a breakfast line cook in the stunning kitchen and Anita mixing virgin Bloody Marys – Bloody Shames, as Dev called them. Once again, Roisin felt guilt that the Gina trauma seemed to have cleared something among them: like a rainstorm in a heat wave.

Was it because they’d been on their best behaviour, stilted, and the spell had been broken?

Either way, Roisin was glad of the cheer as she zig-zagged sriracha onto her fried egg, praising Dev’s cooking and Meredith’s forethought regards the groceries. None of yourcommunal holiday, two miserly allocated Weetabix and off-brand tea bags, UHT milk; she’d thought of every luxury.

(And Dev had insisted on tons of bog roll, with the immortal words: ‘I won’t play a game of chicken with my own arse.’)

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